-The Hindu If it’s the government’s case that NSSO figures are suspect, what has it based policy decisions on? Minister of State for Housing and Urban Affairs Hardeep Singh Puri said last week, “we definitely have a data crisis,” and blamed academics for creating a “false narrative”. Yet, at the heart of the data crisis in India is the Central government, which has been holding back important data. Most recently, it did...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The so-called mohalla clinics, or neighbourhood health centres, are an important part of the ruling Aam Aadmi Party’s electoral campaign. AAP had promised 1,000 across Delhi, but opened just 189 till December last year, attributing the failure to start the rest to bureaucratic hurdles. TOI visited eight mohalla clinics in north, east and central Delhi to find that while patients were mostly satisfied with the...

-Down to Earth Although farmers vote at least as much, if not more than industrial workers or urban middle classes, elections are not fought around farmers' issues Elections are about numbers. Democratic politics is about stitching together a majority. So, the larger a group, the bigger is its “vote bank”, and greater is its electoral clout. A social group that constitutes a majority can therefore dictate its terms in an electoral democracy....

-Hindustan Times The design of large injections of public funds for India’s agriculture economy needs to be informed with rigorous evaluations on what is effective for higher farm productivity. A wage subsidy for farm-labour is one modification that needs an evaluation, to generate evidence to inform how the MGNREGA policy generates employment when there is need, but without stress to farm production Indian agriculture is witnessing a period of complex socio-economic distress,...

-The Hindu Business Line The Government must clear policy bottlenecks for the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana to meet its ambitious target Amidst the government’s celebrations on completing three years in office, one flagship scheme remains a massive — and challenging — opportunity: Housing for all by 2022. The groundbreaking, affordable housing initiative backing this promise, the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY), plans to provide homes to 18 million households in urban India...